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Chris Bayham has been named Chief Information Officer of Brookdale, effective immediately. Brookdale owns and operates over 1,000 senior living communities and retirement communities in the United States. The company was established in 1978. He will be responsible for leading technology strategy, delivery, and operations for the company, and he will be a member of the company’s senior leadership. He is based in Brookdale corporate headquarters in Brentwood, TN, and oversees a large team of associates in both the Brentwood and Milwaukee offices.
Brookdale President and Chief Executive Officer Cindy Baier noted with regard to Bayham’s hiring, “We’re excited to have Chris join Brookdale and take the lead on developing best-in-class tools for our associates. His deep experience in healthcare is important as Brookdale continues to build its reputation and ability to provide quality care with improved patient outcomes.”
Today, Neal Sample was appointed chief information officer (CIO) of Northwestern Mutual. He will head the technology organization at Northwestern Mutual and be responsible for leading the company’s major technology systems and further developing its financial planning digital platforms. With $272.2 billion in assets, $28.5 billion in revenues, and $1.8 trillion worth of life insurance protection in force, Northwestern Mutual serves more than 4.5 million customers for life, disability income, and long-term care insurance, annuities, and brokerage and advisory services.
“With his extensive technology management experience and R&D background, Neal is an excellent fit for our chief information officer role,” said John Schlifske, chairman, president and CEO, Northwestern Mutual. “Neal’s leadership and skill set will have a significant impact as we continue our digital transformation and create a leading digital experience for our clients and advisors.”
Craig Richardville has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of SCL Health, a $2.6 billion faith-based nonprofit healthcare organization based in Denver, Colorado that operates eight care sites and more than 100 physician clinics in addition to home health care, hospice and other facilities.
His responsibilities include leading all aspects of the health system’s information technology strategy and operations, including enterprise systems and applications, information security, core infrastructure and leading the system’s digital transformation and information automation.
“I look forward to working with our executive team, medical group leaders and IT associates to further simplify and modernize our technology ecosystem so that we can be as efficient as possible in advancing patient care through analytics and high-performance business and clinical systems,” Richardville said. “Some key focus areas will include looking at how to apply big data and artificial intelligence technology to help to efficiently and effectively engage patients and staying proactive with cyber security to protect our organization,” he added.
From detailed homework review to back office automation, progress in artificial intelligence will continue to explode in the year ahead. In 2018, Metis Strategy interviewed nearly 40 CIOs, CDOs and CTOs of companies with over $1 billion in revenue as part of our Technovation podcast and column. When asked to identify the emerging technologies that are of growing interest or are making their way onto their 2019 roadmap, 75 percent of the technology leaders highlighted artificial intelligence, while 40 percent said blockchain and 13 percent cited the Internet of Things.
AI, an umbrella term for technologies that enable machines to accomplish tasks that previously required human intelligence, could rapidly upend the competitive landscape across industries. While many companies continue to explore AI business cases, seek executive support, and mature their foundational IT and data capabilities, a growing number of enterprises are deploying the technology at scale.
Walmart, the world’s largest company by revenue, has deployed more than 500 bots into its internal environment to automate processes and drive efficiencies, . Early use cases focused on automating processes such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, and compensation and benefits. More recently, robotic process automation (RPA) has been applied to Walmart’s Shared Services organization, where it automates ERP exception handling such as matching purchase orders to invoices.
As expectations rise for technology to unlock business value, Clay is looking to scale AI across the company. Having recently adopted a product model and end-to-end ownership, the company is well positioned to apply machine learning to everything from merchandising operations, which coordinates supplier-relation interactions and affects the in-store displays across more than 5,000 US stores, to improving the productivity of the world’s largest private workforce.
For more insight from Clay, listen to the .
One of the biggest expenses in hard drive manufacturing can be test equipment, so for $19 billion Western Digital, optimizing the test environment can save hundreds of millions of dollars in CapEx. Given the foresight with which the company has developed its AI and big data strategy, it’s no surprise that among its most advanced AI use cases is optimizing that test environment. “We’re using advanced machine learning and convolutional neural networks to improve our wafer yield management,”. “And we’re using those same algorithms to start identifying and optimizing our test processes, which can help us save hundreds of millions of dollars in capital.”
With a global workforce of 68,000, Western Digital has built a big data and analytics platform that supports a variety of workloads, architectures, and technologies to deliver value to business users of all skill levels. While entry-level analysts can leverage the platform to visualize data in Tableau or perform ad-hoc queries in RStudio, data scientists can make use of advanced techniques to monitor and optimize manufacturing and operations capabilities.
As Western Digital finds increasingly advanced AI use cases in 2019, its flexible platform ensures that the organization continues realizing value while its analytics capabilities mature.
For more insight from Steve, listen to the .
As companies race to develop and deploy increasingly powerful AI systems, there’s a growing recognition of the responsibility companies have to mitigate unintended consequences.andhave noted that engineers often don’t have the capacity to fully imagine the implications of the technology they develop. That’s one reason why Bank of America (BoA) Chief Operations and Technology Officer Cathy Bessantwith Harvard Kennedy School to create the Council on the Responsible Use of AI.
While BoA’s most visible application of AI may be Erica, its virtual banking assistant, the Fortune 25 company is increasingly exploring how AI can be applied to fraud detection and anti-money laundering. As proponent ofCathy recognizes that the bank must maintain transparency into the decision-making models and ensure that outcomes are unbiased. Further, as employees begin to question how AI might impact their jobs, Cathy is thinking proactively about how to guide career transformation and development in the age of AI. To explore these critical questions, the Council on the Responsible Use of AI will convene leaders from government, business, academia, and civil society, including Bessant, to discuss emerging legal, moral, and policy implications of AI.
“If you’re a company where your business strategy can be described by the two words, ‘responsible growth,’ then the concept of responsible AI is not a stretch,” says Cathy. “In fact, it is the tough soul of who we are.”
For more insight from Cathy, listen to the.
7-Eleven defined convenience for a generation, but today, the most convenient storefront is the one in consumer’s pockets. In a 2018 interview, how the company uses new technologies to reduce friction for customers and improve their overall experience.
7-Eleven thinks about technology in two broad categories: proven technologies that are ready to scale, and emerging technologies. For emerging technologies, the company has adopted a fast follower approach, which Gurmeet describes as “watch closely and actively experiment.” In addition to operating several global R&D labs, Gurmeet has tasked the company’s CTO with testing new technologies and conducting proof-of-concept tests. Already, 7-Eleven has deployed a Facebook Messenger chatbot that allows users to sign up for the 7Rewards® loyalty program, find a store location, learn about the latest discount offers, and more. The bot, which was developed through a partnership with the tech firm Conversable, is part of Gurmeet’s strategy to redefine the customer experience through technology.
In 2019, 7-Eleven’s technology organization will leverage open-sourced AI libraries such as TensorFlow to explore how AI can streamline back-office processes such as merchandising and operations. They’ll also look to apply voice interfaces to redefine the customer experience.
For more insight from Gurmeet, listen to the.
Albert Hitchcock is the CIO turned COO and CTO of 174-year-old education company Pearson, where he oversees not just IT and digital transformation, but also product development, procurement, supply chain, customer service, and more. Given his broad purview, Hitchcock is well positioned to apply AI across the business. “AI is not five years out. It’s real and it’s happening today,” . “We’re looking at how we transform all spokes of our business using AI, from how we transform customer call centers using chatbots to how we bring AI, learning design, pedagogy, and insights into brain functions to create a personalized learning experience.”
Machine learning is at the heart of many of Pearson’s most recent product innovations, from authentic assessments and automated essay scoring to adaptive learning and intelligent tutoring. To accelerate the infusion of AI into current and future products and services, the company has hired Intel veteran Milena Marinovaas its first SVP, AI Products and Solutions. While Marinova’s initial focus is updating Pearson’s math homework tool to provide more detailed feedback, the vision to to create omniscient virtual tutors personalized for every student. “[Education] is different for every human and therefore you can potentially accelerate learning and delivery, improve outcomes, and help everyone progress in their lives of learning,” notes Hitchcock. “AI is at the center of that thinking.”
For more insight from Albert, listen to the.
11/19/2018
By Peter High. Published in Forbes.
Shaleen Devgun is a remarkable innovator in the chief information officer community. For the past three years, he has been the CIO of $4 billion Schneider National, a trucking and logistics company based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. You might suspect that running IT for a trucking company based in Green Bay might be an enormous challenge. His burden is a shade lighter inasmuch as two other members of the executive committee at Schneider National are former CIOs, including the company’s CEO Chris Lofgren. (In the past, I interviewed Lofgren about his rise from CIO to CEO.)
Moreover, he has taken a creative approach toward recruiting to his his humble city: he and his team work on tough problems. The logistics business has endless opportunities for greater efficiency and for revenue gains. Devgun’s Forbes CIO Innovation award was based upon his team’s work on a multivendor transportation marketplace with consumer grade tablets, Internet-of-Things devices, and apps. This is just one of several examples of the ideas that have led Devgun and others in the company to think of Schneider National as a technology company masquerading as a trucking company.
(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this interview, please click this link. To read future articles like this one, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: Please describe Schneider National’s business and your role as their Chief Information Officer.
Shaleen Devgun: Schneider National is one of the nation’s largest truckload carriers, and we are a leader in the transportation and logistics space. The breadth of our business is large as we serve our customers through a diverse set of offerings, from over-the-road [OTR] to intermodal, and we also have a healthy logistics business. I have been with the company for around a decade, and I am three years into the CIO role. As part of the executive team, I report to our President and CEO. In addition to my traditional CIO responsibilities, I have accountability for the business transformation, our logistics engineering efforts, and the corporate venturing around our technology.
To read the full article, please visit Forbes.
